h1. Puppet class browser

There are links labeled "Documentation" on the *settings/puppet classes* page, which will direct your browser to the html documentation for a particular puppet module.

The documentation is generated by a rake task that uses the puppetdoc utility and may need some customization to work at a particular site.

h2. Configuration

h3. Document root

There is an optional entry in the config/settings.yaml which overrides the location of the generated HTML pages. The default value is *RAILS_ROOT/public* which relies upon the rails built-in web server.

<pre>

:document_root: /var/www

</pre>

The documentation will be written into *document_root*/puppet/rdoc and this location must be in an area that is served by a web server. Any location that is served by apache or webrick/mongrel will do, and foreman's *public* directory is the default.

h3. manifest cleanup

The puppetdoc utility is sensitive to the layout of the manifests and modules directories. In particular, it cannot handle circular or broken symlinks. If you have problems running puppetdoc then move *extras/rdoc/rdoc_prepare_script.rb* to *scripts/rdoc_prepare_script.rb* and then edit it to suit your site. Most sites will not require a *scripts/rdoc_prepare_script.rb* file. If you do not need a *scripts/rdoc_prepare_script.rb* file please ensure that it does not exist; an empty file will cause an error and lots of extra processing.

h2. Generating the documentation.

h3. Simple case

This is performed by running

 rake puppet:rdoc:generate

h3. Complex case

If the puppetdoc utility fails to process your manifests then you will have to sanitize your puppet modules directory. The rake puppet:rdoc:generate task will check for the existence of *scripts/rdoc_prepare_script.rb*, and runs this before the the puppetdoc command is executed. This script is expected to copy the source files for your modules to another location, fix any issues and then terminate, passing back the location of the copied directory tree. 

A fairly complex example is provided in *extras/rdoc/rdoc_prepare_script.rb*. 

The final command to generate the documentation is then the same as for the simple case

 rake puppet:rdoc:generate

h3. Automation

This rake task is suitable for placing in a cron job and can be added with

  sudo cron -e -u root

and a line added like this

  22 2 * * * (cd /var/rails/foreman; rake puppet:rdoc:generate)

Note that this command assumes that root has write permissions to */var/rails/foreman/public/puppet/rdoc* or wherever you have set *document_root* to in config/settings.yml

h3. Running the command as a non root user

You may experience some problems when running this command, (or other puppet commands,) as a non root user as puppet will change its default values for several key parameters to a location in the user's home directory.

If you run 

  puppet --genconfig | egrep $USER

you will see what I mean. 

Running

 ln -s /etc/puppet/puppet.conf ~/.puppet/puppet.conf 

helps somewhat but beware of this feature